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jerryn70 / GoodbyeAds

MIT License
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GPS not working properly #160

Closed Snaxeko closed 3 years ago

Snaxeko commented 3 years ago

Blocking xtrapath1.izatcloud.net, xtrapath2.izatcloud.net & xtrapath3.izatcloud.net is great for privacy, Qualcomm gathers a huge amount of user data.

Issue

Requests from these domains are needed for people that use their GPS. I had many GPS issues and didn't find how to get rid of these... After noticing that these domains were making requests each 5 min, I found why I experienced these issues : A-GPS data was not updated at all.

What data is really collected ? Qualcomm official's website answers

XTRA uploads the following data types: a randomly generated unique ID, the chipset name and serial number, XTRA software version, the mobile country code and network code (allowing identification of country and wireless operator), the type of operating system and version, device make and model, the time since the last boot of the application processor and modem, and a list of our software on the device

They just forgot to mention that this data is sent with no encryption (except in the xtra3grc.bin format, hope that they're exclusively using that now...). Of course it should be blocked. But it's necessary to allow one of those 3 domains in order to make the GPS work properly.

So I whitelisted one of those domains for 5 min and once the request was done I blacklisted it again, GPS is now working as intended. But I know the issue will come back in about 7 days. (I think that I'm still moderately protected from Qualcomm's threat of privacy, because after less than 3 hours these domains were making requests again.) I tested with Google maps, Waze, TomTom and Mappy, every time all of these apps were unable to refresh my position in real time, and after more than 3-4 months it was just not working at all.

Solution

Like for graph.facebook.com, add a notice to warn users about these GPS issues.

Sources : https://wwws.nightwatchcybersecurity.com/tag/gps/ https://www.qualcomm.com/site/privacy/services

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

vatsalchandan commented 3 years ago

I don't know it is related or not but my GPS was working in google map but other functionalities like "shop near me" etc were not working, so I whitelisted path2.xtracloud.net , path1.xtracloud.net, path3.xtracloud.net and now those functionalities are working fine. These domains looks different then yours.

Snaxeko commented 3 years ago

It probably depends on the device... I also had a time.izatcloud.net connection blocked by Goodbyeads, but I don't know what it is for

jhult commented 3 years ago

Related issue which was closed (without comment): https://github.com/jerryn70/GoodbyeAds/issues/87

bakancs commented 1 year ago

I found izattime.xboxprod.izatcloud.net also. These domains are blocked by NextDNS, Adguard blocklists. Should I allow them?

bakancs commented 1 year ago

I don't know it is related or not but my GPS was working in google map but other functionalities like "shop near me" etc were not working, so I whitelisted path2.xtracloud.net , path1.xtracloud.net, path3.xtracloud.net and now those functionalities are working fine. These domains looks different then yours.

I have 4,5,6 blocked

bakancs commented 1 year ago

Should I allow them dayly for a while or weekly, and then block them again?